Amazon also wants to get
involved in the vaccination
business: The first guinea pigs
are already being sought
There is a lot of money to be made with vaccines - regardless of the effectiveness and safety of the preparations marketed. Amazon also obviously wants its share of the cake: In Amazon's own research laboratory "Grand Challenge" "cancer vaccinations" are being worked on. The first test run is now starting: Twenty test subjects are being sought for this.
Amazon's research team is working in partnership with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center to develop personalized vaccines to treat breast cancer and melanoma (skin cancer). The Bezos family has worked with the Cancer Center for a number of years; Jackie and Mike Bezos, parents of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have been generous investors in the center and the research conducted there since 2008. Although billionaire Jeff Bezos is no longer the CEO of Amazon, he is still considered to be influential within the company .
The Amazon group, meanwhile, has already increased its presence in the healthcare industry in recent years: the online giant has set up an online pharmacy service and an in-house diagnostics laboratory and introduced a health monitoring device called Halo in recent years. However, the fact that Amazon is also actively involved in the development of drugs is new. An Amazon spokesperson said of the vaccine project, "Amazon is bringing science and machine learning expertise to a partnership with Fred Hutch to explore the development of personalized treatment for specific cancers."
The Covid vaccinations are likely to have paved the way for easier development and, above all, approval of gene therapy drugs. The cancer vaccine to be tested should enable "more precise cancer treatment at a more affordable price", as reported by BusinessInsider . At ClinicalTrials.govthe Phase I study of the vaccine entitled “Personalized Neo-Antigen Peptide Vaccine for the Treatment of Stage IIIC-IV Melanoma or Hormone Receptor-Positive Her2-Negative Metastatic Refractory Breast Cancer” is deposited. The planned study was posted on the website for the first time on October 28, 2021. The current status is “recruiting”: 20 patients aged 18 and over are being sought who can have the experimental preparation injected every four weeks. The primary goal should be research into safety and any side effects.
An Amazon spokesman told BusinessInsider that the group was very interested in participating in more such projects in the healthcare sector.The test of the cancer vaccine could still be years away from the official start - at least if the FDA actually imposes strict requirements on the clinical trials. Then each phase could potentially take years to complete. However, as is well known, strict regulations on Covid vaccines have been thrown overboard. Since the advent of mRNA vaccines, the drumbeat for gene therapy drugs against cancer has been constantly beating: as is well known, BioNTech is already working on the development of such preparations. As desirable as effective therapies against cancer are: It remains to be seen whether intensive studies will actually be carried out on the effects and side effects. The fact that online giants like Amazon are also getting involved in the pharmaceutical industry makes it clear once again that financial profits are the primary concern here.
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